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Modeling Profitability and Making Forecasts in Excel

Master Excel's Powerful Tools for Quickly Creating Forecasts and Profitability Models

Created byRob Stephensworkspace_premiumBest Instructor
BeginnerUpdated Apr 20, 2025

What You'll Learn

  • check_circleLearn how to create scenarios in Excel to model different possibilities.
  • check_circleUnderstand how to use Excel's Scenario Manager functionality to create and manage scenarios.
  • check_circleMaster the techniques for building one-way and two-way data tables to analyze profitability.
  • check_circleLearn how to leverage Excel's Forecast Sheet functionality for quick and easy forecasting based on past data.

About This Course

Learn to model profitability and make forecasts in Excel, empowering you to make data-driven decisions for your business. This course delves into key Excel functionalities that give you the tools to analyze past data, build robust financial models, and project future profitability outcomes.

  • Workbook Design Fundamentals: Lay the foundation for effective model building by understanding key principles of worksheet model design to reduce errors.
  • Data Tables: Explore the power of data tables for sensitivity analysis. Master the creation of both one-way and two-way data tables, and learn to identify breakeven points and lines.
  • Goal Seek and Solver: Discover the efficiency of Goal Seek and Solver for optimizing your profitability scenarios. Learn how to find breakeven sales volumes, maximize profit by adjusting production levels, and make informed choices between investment options.
  • Scenario Manager: Enhance your modeling by utilizing Scenario Manager, enabling you to create and compare different scenarios with varying assumptions. Explore the utility of the Scenario Summary Report to analyze the impact of these scenarios on your financial outcomes.
  • Statistical Analysis: Explore how Excel’s statistical functions can help you understand your data better. Learn about correlation analysis, normal distribution, and percentile calculations to gain deeper insights from your data.
  • Analysis ToolPak: Enhance your analytical capabilities with the Analysis ToolPak. Discover its features for descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and smoothing techniques like moving averages and exponential smoothing.
  • Forecast Sheet: Unlock the power of Excel's Forecast Sheet functionality to make predictions based on historical data. Learn how to create forecasts with confidence intervals.

This course focuses on ways Excel facilitates profitability analysis and forecasting. You can explore profitability and forecasting concepts in more detail in my other courses.

Course Content

3 activities • 9 videos • duration: 1h 8m

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Section 14 videos • 1 quiz • 30 min
  • videocamWorkbook and Model Design
    Duration 8:58
  • videocamData Tables
    Duration 7:21
  • videocamProfitability Metrics
    Duration 6:04
  • videocamGoal Seek and Solver
    Duration 8:09
  • quizReview Questions #1
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Section 25 videos • 1 quiz • 37 min
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Final Assessment1 quiz

Your Instructor

Rob Stephens

Founder of CFO Perspective

menu_book34 courses
star5,082 reviews

Rob Stephens is the Founder of CFO Perspective, which provides continuing education courses for CPAs and financial management courses for business advisors and staff. He has been quoted in Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, Bloomberg Businessweek, and many other news sources. He is also the author of Key Performance Indicators and KPI Dashboards. Rob has a 30-year career that includes serving as a CFO, Director of Operations, and SVP of Finance. Rob is an adjunct instructor for the MBA program at Gonzaga University. Rob holds a Masters of Science in Personal Financial Planning and a Graduate Certificate in Financial Therapy from Kansas State University. He received a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Washington.

Credit Information

Is this course eligible for my CPD requirements as a Canadian CPA?

Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.

Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.

What Students Are Saying

4.9 out of 5
Student's Choice
277 reviews
  • JS
    James S.
    starstarstarstarstar

    Excellent match.

  • LH
    Lusine H.
    starstarstarstarstar

    Good excel tools shown.

  • JH
    Jacob H.
    starstarstarstarstar

    Happy with learned excel functions.

  • SH
    Syed H.
    starstarstarstarstar

    Great Experience

Frequently Asked Questions

We are a registered provider with 300+ associations and regulatory bodies worldwide. We operate across 27 global markets including Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK. Every course page clearly displays its specific accreditations. Upon completion, you receive a professional certificate that can be validated online. Our certificates include all necessary accreditation details, credit hours, and completion dates, and are formatted specifically to meet the submission requirements of most global regulatory bodies.

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